Quentin Tarantino's first film as a writer/director is still a
powerhouse and thoroughly enjoyable film almost 15 years after its original
release. It's basically an intense story about a heist that went horribly wrong.
Starting with the now-legendary diner scene, where Mr. Pink (Steve Buscemi, in a
career-making performance) angers his comrades with his refusal to tip the
waitress, Reservoir Dogs is an absorbing drama that grabs you by the throat and
never lets go. The irony is that RD covers everything about the heist but the
heist itself. With a marvelous cast that includes Buscemi, Tim Roth, Harvey
Keitel, Michael Madsen, Chris Penn, as well as Lawrence Tierney, the main thrust
of the film takes place in the aftermath of the heist, which finds Roth's Mr.
Orange a bloody mess after having been shot. Keitel's Mr. White takes him to the
rendezvous, an abandoned warehouse, where the surviving hoods try and figure out
what went wrong.
Part of the problem was that Madsen's Mr. Blonde, a late addition to the crew,
turned out to be a psychopath who needlessly blows away several people. Yet
despite his reckless antics, they come to the uneasy realization that the heist
was doomed from the start, because they were ratted out to the cops by one of
their own. The suspense is wound up slowly and tightly until it is unleashed in
a flurry of bullets as we bounce back and forth from the past, where we see how
the heist was first set up, to the present with its tense climax. All of the
actors give standout performances, but Madsen really shines in another
now-legendary scene where he cuts off a captured cop's ear, with "Stuck In The
Middle With You" playing in the background. Tarantino effectively captures the
brutal disregard for human life that these thugs have, from their boorish
behavior to their vulgar language, where they casually toss racial and sexist
slurs around as if they were nothing. And the film still retains its raw,
kinetic power, even after all this time. It's a classic, enthralling movie that
has been given the special treatment on DVD that it deserves.
The DVD is a special tenth anniversary edition that was first released in 2002. The
two-disc set offers the film in its original widescreen format. There are also
new interviews with the cast, which are very blunt, down to earth, and also very
funny. There's an audio commentary with Tarantino and his cast members, as well
as deleted scenes, which include two alternate scenes of the ear cutting
sequence. The second disc has the film in fullscreen, as well as audio
commentary by film critics, a look at the action figures based on the RD
characters, a tribute to the late Lawrence Tierney and Eddie Bunker, an
interactive K-Billy Radio set, with a special feature: Reservoir Dolls, a
funny reenactment of the ear-cutting scene with the action figures, and much, much
more. The Special Edition DVD is the definitive version of Reservoir Dogs, one
of the definitive crime movies ever made.
--SF
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